All Things AI

Global disruption in manufacturing shows no signs of letting up. And although the era of digital transformation, with its data-driven approach to operations, was viewed as a magic bullet to overcoming some of these challenges, the reality is that turning the vast amounts of information generated by everything from IoT to cyber-physical-systems into actionable insights has proven elusive. One of the only ways to start cracking the code lies in leveraging both OT data and the tacit knowledge of the most experienced plant floor operators. Classic enterprise AI starts with retrieval augmented generation (RAG). But in mission-critical systems, serious failures rarely repeat, so engineers continuously add countermeasures that change the next signature. What works in industry is retrieval augmented reasoning: the ability to bring back the right diagram slice or standard operation procedure (SOP) and then reason over the equipment’s graph and skill paths to propose discriminating checks and safe actions – with evidence. That’s exactly what Hitachi did for a global commercial air conditioning manufacturer.